A Song Out of Bitterness

In Isaiah 38, God tells King Hezekiah, “You’re dying. It’s over.” Hezekiah begins to grieve and goes into great despair. “I said, I shall not see the Lord, the Lord in the land of the living; I shall look on man no more among the inhabitants of the world. My dwelling is plucked up and removed from me like a shepherd's tent…from day to night you bring me to an end; I calmed myself until morning” (Isaiah 38:11-13, ESV).

His goal is just “I hope I can make it through the night.” Have you ever had an argument with a husband or wife to the point where you couldn’t sleep at night? All you could do is try to calm yourself until the morning? Have you ever had one of those emergency phone calls in the middle of the night that kept you up until the sun rose? That is Hezekiah’s cry of the soul.

He goes on to say, “What shall I say? For he has spoken to me, and he himself has done it. I walk slowly all my years because of the bitterness of my soul” (Isaiah 38:15). The circumstances that he finds himself in are so difficult that there’s a heaviness to his soul. Now the bitterness here is not “I am bitterly angry at somebody and holding a grudge.” It’s tasting something in life that causes bitterness to come into the mouth then into the gut, and it slows his whole system down.

Look at the word of the Lord here, though. Hezekiah says something that would be rejected in 90 percent of the pulpits in America today. “Behold, it was for my welfare that I had great bitterness; but in love you have delivered my life from the pit of destruction, for you have cast all my sins behind your back” (Isaiah 38:17).

He said that this bitterness of soul worked something good in his life. Most of us want to rebuke the bitterness of soul. Many of us want to pretend it was never there in the first place. Instead, we are called to trust God even in the bitterest circumstances. Praise him when things are going well. Praise him when things are difficult. Praise him when there’s healing. Praise him when there’s suffering. We are called to praise the Lord.